Pruning the Apollo Program

While 1969-71 were the harvest years - four missions that put men on the
moon, and the safe return of Apollo 13 after its breakdown in space -
they were not so kind to Kennedy Space Center and the men who worked
there. Congress cut the NASA budget, NASA cancelled Apollo missions, KSC
and its contractors laid off thousands of employees - not in one fell
swoop but in a succession of smaller blows. Space enthusiasts had hoped
to go on to a manned landing on Mars in the mid-1980s; it was not to be.
American public opinion was shifting its priorities to other matters:
civil disorders, Vietnam, decaying cities, campus unrest, and inflation.
And Apollo was a victim of its own success. For laymen, one moon landing
after another was a little boring. Noting the public's limited interest
in Apollo 12, the New York Times concluded that a
collective sense of anticlimax was "perhaps predictable considering
the intense national emotion spent on the first moon landing four months
ago."49

Probably the biggest reason for Apollo's decline was the detente in
American-Soviet relations. In 1961, amid cold war animosities, the
United States was trailing the Soviet Union in the world's most widely
publicized form of competition, manned spaceflight. Eight years later,
the United States had clearly demonstrated its superiority. Despite the
Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, relations between the two nations
had improved. Americans seemed less eager to spend "whatever it
took" to surpass the Russians in space. Agreement on a
U.S.-U.S.S.R. rendezvous mission (the Apollo-Soyuz flight of 1975),
signed before the end of the Apollo program, clearly indicated a new
policy of cooperation in space.

NASA budgets marked the contour intervals of Apollo's descent.
Appropriations had exceeded $5 billion in the mid-1960s; in fiscal years
1969 and 1970 they fell below $4 billion. Apollo research and
development funding declined from $2.9 billion in FY 1967 to $2 billion
in FY 1969. Initially, NASA's follow-on programs to Apollo-Skylab, an
earth orbital laboratory; Voyager, an unmanned Mars mission; and Nerva,
a nuclear rocket engine - bore the brunt of the cutbacks. Funding for
space programs to follow Apollo appeared in the Johnson administration's
1968 budget. Congress sharply reduced Nerva and Apollo Applications
(Skylab) appropriations, cutting the latter from $454.7 million to $253
million. Voyager was eliminated entirely, while Apollo funds fell by
less than 2%. For FY 1969 the Johnson administration budgeted $439.6
million for Apollo Applications, $38 million for 1971 and 1973 unmanned
missions to Mars, and $41 million for Nerva. Again all three programs
were cut sharply: Skylab eventually received $150 million that year.
Apollo received all but $14 million of its $2.039 billion request. After
the first lunar landing, however, Apollo lost its immunity to cutbacks,
and further tight budgets brought reductions there as well.50

The Apollo flight schedule that was published on the eve of the first
lunar landing called for nine additional flights before June 1971-a
launch every 11 weeks. Apollo 12-15 would develop man's capability to
work in the lunar environment; 16-20 would extend the astronauts' stay
time on the moon to three days and increase their range of exploration.
A primary purpose of the latter missions was to study the technological
requirements for a potential lunar base.51

American lunar scientists opposed the rapid pace of the launches. They
wanted 6-12 months between flights to study moon samples and plan future
experiments. Dr. Lee A. DuBridge, Presidential Science Advisor,
expressed the scientists' viewpoint in congressional testimony on the FY
1970 NASA budget: "Nothing can do more harm to support for the
space program than to have a series of missions for which there are no
clear objectives - such as a series of manned revisits to the moon
without providing the capability to perform new scientific experiments
and to exploit interesting new lunar features."52 Three weeks after the first lunar
landing, John Noble Wilford, space correspondent for the New York
Times, publicized the dispute over Apollo's future. The
scientific community, according to Wilford, sought a larger role in
mission planning and more scientist astronauts, as well as more time
between missions.53

The July 1969 schedule had included an alternate plan that extended the
nine remaining launches by 18 months and provided a launch interval of
4-5 months. Following the success of Apollo 11, NASA officials approved
the compromise schedule. In defending the choice, George Mueller
acknowledged the scientific arguments but cited other major factors.
Among these, Mueller included "operational considerations in
keeping a steady workload through the Cape" thereby
"minimizing the cost."54

While NASA debated the pace of the remaining Apollo missions, a
Space Task Group examined the future of America's space program. What
lay beyond Apollo was the subject of their September 1969 report,
"America's Next Decades in Space." The report's sponsors, a
panel including Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and NASA Administrator
Thomas O. Paine, recommended a balanced manned and unmanned space
capability. The group listed three possible NASA programs leading to a
manned landing on Mars before the end of the century. The most ambitious
plan called for a lunar orbiting station by 1978, a lunar surface base
and a 50-man, earthorbiting station in 1980, and the first Mars mission
in 1983. The cost of all this would reach an annual $8 billion by 1976.
The least ambitious plan postponed the lunar base and earth-orbiting
station by three years and left open the date for the initial Mars
expedition. The funding estimates for this second plan ran slightly more
than $4 billion a year during the 1970s. Apollo missions would lay the
groundwork for the lunar surface base. The report generated little
support, and NASA's budget slipped to $3.3 billion the following year.55

The decline in Apollo funding was even more severe; a reduction of
nearly 50% dropped the program's budget below the $1 billion mark for
the first time in eight years. While much of the decline represented an
expected slowdown in costs, the shortage of funds forced drastic program
changes. Edward Mathews, KSC's Apollo Program Manager, notified Debus in
March 1970 that FY 1971 funding constraints had eliminated the Apollo 20
mission. There would be an average interval of six months between
launches, with Apollo 18-19 put off until 1974 after a year of Skylab
missions. Further budget cuts in September included a $50 million
reduction for Apollo. NASA officials reluctantly cancelled missions 18
and 19. The flight of Apollo 17 in late 1972 would bring the program to
a close.56